Especially for installation in motor vehicles, the electrical assembly must be moisture-proof, at least after the connector is plugged in, in order to be protected from the environment, in particular moisture and dirt. For this purpose, connector pins have increasingly been used, which are injection-moulded as insertion parts of the plastic material of the connector area and pressed into the circuit board or soldered to the circuit board. For example, DE 10 2004 002562 A1 or EP 712 265 D1 show such an assembly.
In addition, the edge connector principle is known, in particular from computer technology, for exchangeable plug-in cards and memory cards; here, contact surfaces suitable for making electrical contact are formed on a carrier, for example a circuit board, and are usually contacted by means of spring contacts. DE 10 2005 0 03448 A1 also suggests said edge connection for a control unit that is intended for a motor vehicle and comprises a circuit board arranged outside a housing; in this configuration, only individual electrical components arranged on the circuit board, rather than the circuit board itself, are protected from the environment by means of a housing unless the housing is also sealed in the connector area, at least by plugging in the connector. This considerably increases the cost of the circuit board as well as of production and is therefore not suitable for cost-efficient mass production.